why do England not mark Mertsacker, giving him a free header which Hart saves then again thet don't mark him for the corner AGAIN,bang goal
Kane's injured, isn't he? Watching the England game afterall. Walker's passing really has been shocking which is a shame because there's been a small plus point in the way he's pushed Reus back and dealt with him in general. No idea why Schurrle's not playing and Kiessling's not in the squad, that Kroos is out of position and Kruse is out of his depth. Expect to see Draxler and Schurrle second half. Smalling's useless, he's had it easy with Germany not playing well but the marking for Mertesacker's headers is really bad. We've played pretty well thoug, Rooney's been excellent and the rest have done okay.
Walker's passing , as for us is piss poor. Created next to nothing , so really we deserve no more. Hodgson is to pedestrian for England to ever do anything. Hellas qualified surprisingly again.
Missed that...and the start of the game!, just noticed he wasn't there, when I saw he wasn't on the bench either I went and checked, shame would have been good for him to play in that one.
Sig and Vlad are watching the WC at home with us lot and the French are 3 up with an unlikely brace from Sakho, Ukraine are down to 10 men. Snailmunchers squeak through again. CR7 wins the super striker duel, out doing Ibra's brace with a hat-trick. Greek striker Mitroglu is one to watch, on fire atm with CL goals and got 3 in two games against Romania, he's a battering ram of a striker with great skill.
Well maybe I was getting a bit carried away in the first half, I thought we were keeping them quiet but really it was a poorly balanced team of second choices that Low put out. Most worrying of all, apart from 2 losses with little goal threat, is central midfield. Carrick, Lampard and Gerrard are the ones that stand out but really they want to be playing the same role, I can't see how they'd work together so you look at the other options. Cleverley, Henderson, Wilshere? Not good enough. Wilshere has his excuses and I hope that he goes to the World Cup in better form but those other 2 options are frightening. I admire Hodgson for trying to promote youngsters but what he should be doing is simply opening the door to them, at the moment he's pushing them through against his better judgement(I hope! ). He's already ditched Zaha, Sterling, Butland and other young players where it was apparent that whilst they are young and can improve, they're simply not good enough now. Cleverley and Henderson had the same fate but they've had to bring them anyway. What's disappointing most though is that we do have some players who are proven they're capable players and they've been overlooked. Hodgson is hopefully looking at the call ups he's made and looking at what seperates the successes. The standout is age and experience whether it's Lambert, Townsend, Lallana or Gibbs. We're not going to achieve anything trying to push the likes of Barkley, Smalling and other young talents through when they're not ready. Or playing average, out of form players like Henderson, Cleverley, Smalling and Welbeck. We've got the likes of Dawson, Lennon, Caulker, Huddlestone, Delph, Agbonlahor, Osman and Dyer who haven't even had a whiff of a chance under Hodgson despite proving themselves every week at club level and it's criminal. I don't even know why Hodgson rates some of those players higher than the likes of Noble or Routledge. I'm not saying those players would make us some great side, they won't, but at least they're proven of a certain standard. At the moment Hodgson's a farmer ignoring a perfectly good crop and planting seeds hoping they'll do better.
One thing that I noticed is that while Townsend has not done badly he has been given lots of the ball. Lennon on the other hand was almost frozen out when he did get to play and for me he is still the better player atm.
I was just reading about 600 million persons in India defecate outside their homes. I wonder if any England fans did it on the Wembley pitch after the latest performance?
A team wearing white, great at keeping the ball and regaining possession, but no penetration whatsoever. Can't help thinking I've seen that somewhere before....
I, on the other hand, got a familiar feeling watching a talented team that's underachieved so far, has Lloris as a central player, wears white and blue, and has a cockerel badge. Townsend has a way of looking good while doing nothing useful because of his dribbling. When I saw him at WHL, I was mesmerized for a moment by one of his step-over sequences, as in a cartoon when eyeballs spin. Despite not having Townsend's (very occasionally dangerous) shot, Lennon helps the team more because his dribbling runs tend to end up near enough to the goal to be really threatening. Townsend stops at some point near the box, and launches a harmless shot or cross. I'm still annoyed remembering the last game Lennon got a lot of the ball for England. Nobody seemed willing or able to do anything but him, so they gave the ball to him time after time, and time after time he beat his man and got near enough to launch a potentially dangerous cross. TBH, the crosses were mostly poor, but the support was poor as well. More to the point, if you have one player able to provide real threat, who forces the other team to double him, do you blame him for a disappointing game and drop him? It never made any sense to me.
No but I used to nip into Ashburton Grove (when it was scrapyards etc.) to relieve myself after driving up into London from Kent when I was working at Crouch End. One day I had the Norovirus and had to drop my keks, squat down under the Ford Ranger and lay the brown stuff. Whenever I pass the Emiroids Stadium I wonder whether I had a **** closer to the centre spot or the dug-out.
